So it seems an appropriate time to consider one of the fan theories from One More Day: Was Mary Jane supposed to be pregnant? Anyone who came to that conclusion is going to have a different understanding of the story—as well as what Peter and MJ gave up—than the typical reader.

The final chapter of One More Day began with Mary Jane standing by a bathroom, shortly after Mephisto offered to save Aunt May’s life in exchange for Peter Parker’s marriage. Some readers came to the conclusion that Mary Jane was throwing up, although this is not explicitly stated at any point.

After Peter and Mary Jane accepted the deal, Mephisto gloated and showed them a vision of the daughter they would have made if they had just stayed married.

This was seeded in the preceding chapter, in which Spider-Man met a cryptic little girl and a cross-dressing Mephisto. It may be an understatement to say that this foreshadowed the later scene, considering how obvious the dialogue is. It was pretty clear what JMS and Quesada were setting up—in a scene in which a little red-headed girl, described as a possibility Mephisto doesn’t want to talk about yet—talks about her beautiful mother, and smart father.

Comics is a medium which is heavily reliant on visual shorthand, and a young woman possibly throwing up is visual shorthand for morning sickness. This is also a story that ends with the revelation about the child Mary Jane could have had.

Around part three of One More Day, Peter starts having weird encounters with other-dimensional versions of himself that are wealthy but alone and miserable. They lead him to a little girl who bitches at him for being horrible and self-centered, and then takes him to Mephisto. Being the Devil and all, Mephisto promises he could save Aunt May, but only in exchange for the most valuable thing Peter has: his marriage! Mephisto then teleports Spider-man back to wherever the hell MJ is, and it turns out she got the same offer. MJ is having obvious morning sickness, but talks things out with Peter anyway. She decides giving their marriage to the devil is okay because, hey, they’ll probably find each other again (I read it as “we both know this shit won’t stand once there’s been a change in editorial”). Mephisto makes sure Peter knows that by making the deal he’s essentially giving Mary Jane a magical abortion and shows them the daughter he’ll never have, the little red-haired girl who yelled at him.

I did not have the impression from the story that Mary Jane was meant to be pregnant. From the issue, there was no reference to the future child having already been conceived, something a villain like Mephisto would have enjoyed gloating about. Nor was there any indication that Mary Jane was aware of any pregnancy. She could easily have just been grunting due to the stress of a difficult decision. An upset stomach has also become visual shorthand for that. She may also have just been sobbing, which people often do in difficult situations.

It seems pretty clear that this wasn’t a result that the reader was intended to come to, considering how it was never clearly stated. If it was meant to be a plot point, it would have been easy enough to construct a few lines of dialogue making that explicit. Currently, for this fan theory to pan out, the reader would have to connect several dots to understand something that seems to be rather important to the story. In the numerous interviews post-One More Day, this is also something that Joe Quesada and J. Michael Straczynski did not bring up, which suggests that it’s not something readers are supposed to pick up on.

One More Day does have a poor reputation, so there is a potential argument that the typical measures for how to interpret a story don’t apply here. One could say that in a good story, something that is essential to understanding the ramifications of the characters’ decisions would usually be stated clearly, but that we shouldn’t assume that One More Day has any attributes of a good story. Although there is the counterpoint that a bad story is where you’d expect to find significant misunderstandings.

It’s worth noting that the bathroom conversation occurred with different dialogue in the final issue of One Moment in Time. This version of Peter and MJ were explicitly not married. They were just on the verge of a break-up.

There’s just as much evidence that she’s suffering from “obvious morning sickness” in this scene, as there was for One More Day. I wouldn’t be surprised to see fan theories in the future about what happened to Mary Jane during the gap between her appearances here and her later (chronologically speaking) return to the books in Amazing Spider-Man #600.

There is related speculation that the kid was supposed to be the daughter Peter and MJ lost during the Clone Saga (who grew up to become Spider-Girl in the MC2 Universe, a spinoff of an acclaimed issue of What If?) That was a plot point that ended with either a stillbirth, or Norman Osborn faking a stillbirth in order to steal his archenemy’s baby. The comics never provided a definitive answer. Some readers thought that the little girl Peter met in the alleyway was supposed to be Mayday Parker, and that the twist was supposed to be that Peter and MJ eliminated the daughter they didn’t know was alive from existence.

I don’t think JMS and Quesada realized that when a character is introduced as Peter and Mary Jane’s daughter, many readers will think it’s meant to be Spider-Girl. There were no references to Baby May during JMS’s run, which was generally rather light on nods to the work of earlier creative teams. In Amazing Spider-Man #500, a future version of Peter Parker revealed that he and Mary Jane were parents, but they had a son named Ben. It seems unlikely that JMS would have added a plot point which requires a familiarity with obscure periods of the Spider-Man comics—keep in mind that the survival of Baby May was never explicitly stated, so a reader would need to know what happened in earlier comics, plus what some of the speculation is—in order to understand what’s going on. Plus, this daughter had her mother’s red hair while Mayday typically had her father’s brown hair.

Have you guys heard about these One More Day theories before? If so, what are you thoughts on how it changes the story? Are there any other unusual interpretations of events in Spider-Man stories that you’d like to share?

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Thomas Mets is a middle school English teacher in New York City. He is also one of the moderators of the Spider-Man forum at Comic Book Resources. He grew up near Forest Hills Queens, and has been a fan of Spider-Man since coming across the character in the comic strip.

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(11) Comments

Although they were on the verge of a break up in OMIT lets remember that that was toxically OOC for both of them.@Sano: You are forgetting a few things though.a) OMIT was OOC thus shouldn’t really be counted
b) Spider-Man and the X-Men is a mini-series so it’s canonicity is debatable at best
c) Peter and MJ became pregnant in the 1990s by accident in the first placeI prefer to interpret things as MJ not only not being pregnant but that Mephisto was bullshitting about their future child. Not only would he as the devil lie but his whole gimmick in the story was to make them feel pain so lying to them about that would make them feel more pain.The idea that they cosmically aborted their child inadvertently is so mean spirited to me.

I never saw it as she was pregnant, but then after i read the story once, i put the comic away an imediatly stopped buying spider-man comics, so in my anger i could have missed a subtle refrence. It's years later now, and the idea that Spider-Man made a deal with the devil is enough to make my skin turn green.

Hornaceck, sorry about that. The link's been fixed.Herbiepopnecker, it has been a few years so editorial has changed.Mohammed, you made me realize that One More Day is probably the first reference to Parker Industries. There might be a fan theory there, given what it says about Peter. It's probably a coincidence, but I can't be a hundred percent sure about that.

While reading the issue I never got the notion that she was pregnant. MJ was expressing what a lot of us were feeling after reading the issue. The death of 616 Spider-Man in many ways.As for the baby, could've been May or a future baby. They never say either way.I do think that after the OMD deal, the world was rewritten so that MJ has never been pregnant in 616, ever. In the mini X-Men and Spider-Man that came out after OMD, they show Spider-Man and X-Men through the ages. In the book that centered around the 90s, issue 3, Ben Reilly said that Peter Parker stopped being Spider-Man during the Clone Saga because he lost his powers. Nothing about MJ being pregnant.Given how adamant MJ was against getting pregnant out of wedlock in OMIT, I doubt she would allow herself to get pregnant. But hey, accidents happen and I guess ya never know.Just my interpretation though. Up in the air unless someone wants to deal with the baby resurfacing or even mention the miscarriage in the post OMD world. Which I don't think will ever happen.

While you have written a well thought out article, Thomas. Thank you very much for reminding of it, just so you know I'm rolling my eyes here.While I have heard of some of these theories, I'm gravitating towards the theory that she was pregnant at the time of OMD "shudder" given the visual evidence and add to that if we are to go by that panel that show PI logo, it does seem that they had the plan to do what they're doing now since then. Which by all account is still the BIGGEST MISTAKE ever made by Marvel.and if we are go by the final count of the latest poll at CBR, a lot of people agree it should never have happened.Would You Like to See the Effects of "Spider-Man: One More Day" Reversed?
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=poll&amp;id=440
Total Votes 5,965
Yes! Peter and MJ belong together 88.4% 5276
No way! They're better off being apart 11.6% 689